Top 10 New World-Changing Innovations of the Year (With Videos!)

The early 20th century produced a breathtaking succession of innovations—the Wright Flyer, the Model T, the Panama Canal. It was a golden age of engineering. A century hence, observers may well look back at our era in much the same way: Cars are being reimagined from the wheels up. Advances in solar energy show the way past fossil fuels. And space probes explore planets that could become our future homes. These pages salute the innovators who are inventing the future. Welcome to the new golden age.

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Leadership Award

ENGINEERING FOR A DEVELOPING WORLD

Innovator: Amy B. Smith, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Engineering Equation: brilliant design + broad experience in developing countries + passion = a movement to tackle complex problems with simple technologyD-Lab occupies a former shipping area in a basement beneath MIT's famous Infinite Corridor, which connects many of the university's buildings. Scattered about the room, beneath a jumble of pipes and ductwork, is a curious collection that includes corn shellers, grain mills, solar panels, piles of red-speckled corncobs, sooty charcoal briquettes and one large plastic container labeled "Holly's Bovine Faecal Matter—Do Not Remove Please."

The visionary who presides over this idiosyncratic work space is senior lecturer Amy B. Smith, a leader in the appropriate technology movement, which helps people in developing countries through the creation of simple, low-cost technology. Smith's own designs—for no-electricity medical lab equipment, better grain mills and more–have won awards and improved lives. But she is also a pied piper for appropriate techÂ­nology–and the engineers she inspires may constitute her greatest achievement.

"More and more students around the world want to make a difference, as well as making a living," says Paul Polak, a leader in the field and the author of Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. "Amy's giving them that opportunity." Smith and her students tackle problems in countries as far-flung as Haiti, Ghana and India. Her growing cadre of followers and former students praise her offbeat humor and ability to focus, even when bouncing on Third World buses after sleeping on cold, manure-stained concrete. After joining Smith and other students in Peru last January, Mary Hong, now a 19-year-old MIT junior, switched her major from aerospace to mechanical engineering. (See "Fixing the World on $2 a Day," Aug. '08.) "Amy is genuinely passionate about her work," Hong says. "She has ideas, and she goes out and does something about them."

Automotive Equation: aerodynamic design + lightweight composite-fiber body + real-world experience = a new, ultraefficient automotive categoryFive years ago, engineer Steve Fambro was working for a biotech company, spending his weekends tinkering with his pickup truck to increase its fuel economy. "I realized it was a losing proposition because of all the weight and drag," he says. "I thought, 'What would a vehicle with no drag look like?'" The Aptera Typ-1e, which should be available by the end of 2008, became Fambro's answer. It could prove revolutionary, opening up a new automotive category of ultra-high-mileage automobiles designed for real-world drivers and--at $30,000--priced for them, too.

The Typ-1e's drag coefficient is an astounding 0.15, compared to 0.26 for the Toyota Prius, considered an exemplar of aero-dynamic efficiency. (SUVs top 0.40.) According to Fambro, the entire Typ-1e (shown here) produces less drag than the sideview mirrors on a pickup truck.

At just 1500 pounds, the two-seater is lightweight, as well. The body is made of an ultralight composite--Fambro's partner, Chris Anthony, used the material in wakeboard boats he'd designed--bonded to a metal safety cage. As a three-wheel vehicle, the Typ-1e is exempt from some safety requirements, yet it meets or exceeds crash-test guidelines for conventional cars. The company is launching the all-electric Typ-1e with a 120-mile range and a recharge time of 8 hours. Next year, it plans to follow up with a plug-in hybrid, the Typ-1h, which should get 300 mpg for the first 120 miles and never go less than 130 miles on a gallon of gas. Aptera is also planning a larger vehicle with seating for four.

Unlike some other eco-car startups, Aptera has recruited heavy hitters from the automotive industry, arguably giving the company the know-how to truly transform the roads. "I think as time goes on and everyone accepts that we're in an energy-scarce world, cars will shift in styling," Fambro says. "Twenty years from now, we'll look at cars that waste energy the way we look at litter today. They will make us feel weird."

Space Equation: hard-earned experience + robotic space laboratory + teamwork = history-making proof of H2O on MarsMay 25, 2008, brought sweet vindication to Peter Smith. On that day, in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory control room in Pasadena, Calif., the senior research scientist for the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory watched from behind the manned banks of computers as a spacecraft hurtled toward Mars. Smith had designed cameras for three previous Mars missions. The 1997 Pathfinder effort was successful. But the 1999 Mars Polar Lander crashed on the Martian surface, and the 2001 Surveyor mission was canceled because of the Lander accident. Now, after the back-to-back failures, he was leading the $420 million Phoenix Mars Mission--a program he had concocted and proposed. In the control room, a JPL team member held a thick contingency plan written to cover every possible failure scenario. But, as the spacecraft passed through each successful stage of the landing, "he tore up a page and tossed it into the air," Smith says. By the time the tension in the room had morphed into exultation, "it looked like it was snowing."

Aptly named for the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes, Phoenix inaugurated the Mars Scout Program, a series of robotic missions to study the planet's present and past environments, climate cycles and geology, and whether it has the potential to support life. U of A's partners in Phoenix included a flight team from JPL (led by Barry Goldstein) and a group from Lockheed Martin (led by Ed Sedivy) that built the lander.

After the lander reached Mars's arctic plain, its seven instrument platforms kicked into gear, among them a robotic arm, cameras and an instrument cluster designed for microscopy, electrochemistry and conductivity analysis. On July 31, the team announced a milestone. Phoenix had confirmed that ice first spied in 2002 by the Odyssey orbiter was, in fact, water. It was "the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted," scientist William Boynton said. The lander also identified sodium, magnesium, potassium chlorides and other chemicals needed for life.

By December, temperatures will drop as low as minus 200 F--so cold the carbon-dioxide atmosphere will freeze and fall to the ground. The lander will be encased in ice, ending the mission. There are no plans to try to revive the device next spring. But, Smith says, "It is called the Phoenix, you know."

Alt-Fuel Equation: sugar cane + yeast + gene splicing = climate-friendly, renewable fuel that is chemically identical to petroleum-based dieselIf you could dream up a renewable fuel, it might look a lot like diesel: far more energy intensive than ethanol and combustible in existing engines with no performance tradeoffs. But it would give off a fraction of the emissions of conventional diesel--oh, and it wouldn't gum up in cold weather. That's just what scientists Jack D. Newman, Kinkead Reiling and Neil Renninger, co-founders of Emeryville, Calif.-based Amyris Biotechnologies, concluded when they decided to apply their synthetic-biology expertise to creating a climate-friendly alternative to petroleum.

The team tinkered with brewer's yeast, splicing in genes from an organism that produces hydrocarbons as a metabolic byproduct. (That's not as unlikely as it seems. While he won't name the species, Renninger mentions lemon and mint as examples of plants that produce hydrocarbons.) Amyris's new microbes metabolize sugar and churn out long hydrocarbon chains that are better known as diesel fuel. The liquid is purer than conventional diesel and burns more cleanly.

Amyris didn't start out as a fuel company. It launched in 2003 with the goal of synthesizing an affordable substitute for artemisinin, a pricey component of malaria treatment that is extracted from a plant found only in China and Vietnam. The new compound is still in development. Meanwhile, Amyris has formed partnerships to build a diesel plant in Brazil, with the ambitious goal of pumping out a billion gallons within the next five years. Amyris also plans to develop renewably sourced gasoline and jet fuel--but diesel was an ideal place to start. "Diesel fuel is what drives industry," Reiling says. "Having an additional source will be a big advantage to the world economy."

Medical Equation: silicon chip + tumor markers + blood sample = fast, affordable cancer diagnosis toolNinety percent of cancer deaths occur after tumor cells have metastasized, traveling through the blood-stream to seed new cancer sites. Tragically, doctors can't tell that a cancer is metastasizing until symptoms appear, which delays treatment. The hurdle is that the circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, are just too rare, accounting for only a few cells per billion in the bloodstream. Furthermore, outside the body they are too fragile to survive the lab procedures used in standard blood tests.

Biomedical engineer Mehmet Toner, a faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital, led a team that tackled the problem. The new diagnostic device is a silicon chip the size of a business card. It is etched with 78,000 tiny posts, each narrower than a human hair and coated with antibodies that attract CTCs. When a blood sample is slowly pumped through the chip, red and white blood cells and platelets bounce past the posts and escape, while CTCs stick.

Nobel laureate Phil Sharp, a member of MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, found the first test results, published in the journal Nature, "stunning." Toner's chip found CTCs in all but one of 116 samples from 68 patients with metastatic cancers--a remarkable 99 percent sensitivity rate.

In the short term, the chip will give doctors instant feedback, Sharp says, allowing them "to follow the course of cancer in a patient, characterize the cells and try to design the best therapy." Eventually, it may yield cheap cancer screening for the general population. Researchers have long predicted that a new generation of fast and inexpensive diagnostic tools would transform medicine. Toner's CTC chip is a dramatic advance in that direction.

Motion Equation: 14 cameras + smart software + instant motion capture = real-time animation and a revolutionary computer interfaceWe are rough on our computers as we make them do our bidding-- punching at our keyboards, scrolling cursors, poking at touchscreens. The Stage system developed by Andrew Tschesnok sidesteps all that, enabling computers to recognize human beings and translate our natural movements into digital information. The system transforms motion capture from a narrow, though impressive, tool into a versatile computer interface.

Motion capture, pioneered in the 1970s, has been used in biomechanics research and for computer animation in video games and movies. (The most famous mo-cap creation is Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies.) The new approach dispenses with the laboriously assembled, marker-studded suits that older systems use. Fourteen cameras positioned around a studio capture the movements of anyone who steps inside. The system recognizes the human form and creates a down-to-the-millimeter virtual model of the subject--one that is updated at 120 frames per second.

Organic Motion, the company Tschesnok runs along with partner Jonathan Rand, envisions several applications. The Stage system could be used with patients suffering from neuromuscular disorders to yield biomechanical data. A maker of high-end bicycles will soon use the system to help cyclists choose the ideal frame. And Stage could make movie special effects far easier to produce.

Farther down the road, the system may change the world of online gaming. The player's own full-body motions might become those of the onscreen avatar. "Instead of getting on the Internet, you may step into the Internet," Tschesnok says.

Ultimately, mo-cap could transform our homes and workplaces. "We've taught computers how to see people, and that changes what the computer can do," he says. "Your house will be aware of you." While that may raise some dark visions of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the applications Tschesnok envisions are benign. The house might react to its occupants' activities by adjusting the temperature or music--or even by making popcorn when they sit down to watch an old sci-fi thriller.

Safe Water Equation: smart chemistry + low manufacturing costs + vision = clean water for millions in the developing world and here at homeEven in the United States, people can't always count on clean, safe water gushing out of the faucet. After disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, treatment systems can go down for days or even weeks. Thanks to a team led by Greg Allgood, a Procter & Gamble public-health specialist, Americans now have a ready alternative to stockpiling water or boiling it. It's an inexpensive powder called PUR that is already saving lives in developing countries, where about 1.6 million children die each year from diarrheal diseases.

Procter & Gamble chemists developed the product with cooperation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The goal was to improve on chlorine water treatment, which kills bacteria and viruses but not parasites such as cryptosporidium and giardia and does nothing to make muddy water look cleaner. The scientists managed to squeeze the multistep process used in large water-treatment plants into a packet of powder that costs pennies to produce. The mixture includes flocculants, which cause suspended solids, heavy metals and parasites to clump together. The resulting "floc" can then be filtered out with a cotton cloth. Time-released chlorine kills bacteria and viruses. Within 30 minutes, about a teaspoon of the powder can treat 2.5 gal. of water. "The visual improvement is dramatic," says Eric Mintz, chief of the CDC's diarrheal diseases and epidemiology section.

After struggling to make a profit from the powder, P&G planned to stop production. Allgood convinced executives to set up a nonprofit unit for the product instead. Today, he directs the Children's Safe Drinking Water program, which has helped purify more than a billion liters of water in 40-plus countries, with the help of partners such as UNICEF and the World Health Organization. During a visit to Popular Mechanics last winter, Allgood converted a jar of murky liquid containing fecal matter into clear, potable water. (Yes, the editors drank it--after Allgood went first.) "It's a tragedy that 4000 children die every day while waiting for multi-million-dollar water-treatment plants to be built," Allgood says. "With our powder, they get the same quality water, but they can have it now." As of this year, so can North American backpackers, homeowners and emergency responders.

Solar Equation: heat from the sun + 82 mirrors + an efficient engine that burns no fuel + meticulous engineering = record-breaking solar powerSolar power has represented the future for so long, it's startling to find out that it's finally here--at a scale big enough to matter. Two installations in Southern California will soon start generating a combined 1750 megawatts, enough to power more than a million homes. The plants won't use photovoltaic cells. Instead, giant mirrored dishes will focus the sun's heat onto a Stirling engine--a system in which hydrogen, expanding as it is heated and contracting as it is cooled, drives a set of pistons. The engine powers a generator. "It's cost, cost, cost," says Bruce Osborn, CEO of Stirling Energy Systems, which is producing the equipment. "You've got to compete with conventional power."

It's also passion, passion, passion. Osborn has tinkered with the technology since his days as a newly minted engineer at Ford Motor Co. in the 1970s. To hone the system, he tapped engineers from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, led by Chuck Andraka--who also has worked on solar Stirling systems for decades. The partners cooperated on a six-dish prototype plant, fiddling in search of an efficiency sweet spot. They found it. On Jan. 31, 2008, the team broke a 24-year-old record, achieving a conversion rate of 31.25 percent (85.6 kilowatts of thermal energy yield 26.75 kw of electricity for the grid). The new facilities will more than double the amount of commercial solar electric power generated in the United States.

Next Generation Award

INTELLIGENT MOBILITY INTERNATIONAL WHEELCHAIR

Innovators: Rudy Roy, Ben Sexson, Daniel Oliver, Charles Pyott

Mobility Equation: two bikes + brilliant design + welding skills = all-terrain wheelchairs for the disabled in developing countriesDuring their senior year at the California Institute of Technology, Rudy Roy and Ben Sexson signed up for professor Ken Pickar's class Sustainable Engineering for the Developing World. Soon, they found themselves teleconferencing with students and professors at a Guatemalan university, talking wheelchairs. They learned that disabled people in the country face costs of $400 and up, more than twice the national average monthly household income. As a further challenge, standard chairs are no match for Guatemala's potholed streets, muddy roads and rugged hills. Wielding hacksaws and gas welders, the students cannibalized a pair of old mountain bikes to build an inexpensive, dirt-road-worthy chair. Their easy-to-Â­reproduce creation had one more advantage over other wheelchairs shipped to the developing world: "There are bike shops in every country," says Dan Oliver, who joined the effort as a Caltech engineering undergraduate along with Charles Pyott, a student at the nearby Art Center College of Design. "Take our wheelchair into any shop in the world, and they could fix it."

Having graduated, the four now run a nonprofit organization, Intelligent Mobility International. They are working to squeeze production costs down from $150 to $40 per chair. And they've partnered with Transitions, a Guatemalan charity that mainly employs wheelchair-bound workers, to build their chairs. "When I started at Caltech," Pickar says, "the president at the time said, `Ken, some of your students are going to change the world.' These may be the ones who do it."

Energy Equation: heat from the sun + hydrogen forced through two sets of membranes = a revolutionary way to generate electricityIn 1968, when he was a high school student in Mobile, Ala., Lonnie Johnson built a robot. One challenge was figuring out how to power the limbs. He ended up using a combination of batteries and a pneumatic system that he rigged from jukebox parts and a barbecue-grill tank that he filled with compressed air.

The experience would come in handy later. Johnson became a nuclear engineer and spent several years working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on projects including the Galileo and Cassini deep-space probes. In his spare time, he extended the ideas he'd developed when building his science-fair robot to work on an eco-friendly refrigeration system that would substitute water for Freon. The technology quickly paid off--in a novel fashion. He used it to engineer the high-powered Super Soaker water gun that has become his best-known invention.

Now Johnson, who holds more than 100 patents, is incorporating his refrigeration experience into a new device that uses heat to generate electricity. The Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter System, or JTEC, has no moving parts. "It uses temperature differences to create pressure gradients," says Paul Werbos, program director at the National Science Foundation, which has provided funding for JTEC. "Instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or wheel, he's using them to force ions through a membrane. It's a totally new way of generating electricity from heat."

In the JTEC, hydrogen circulates between two fuel cell-like membrane-electrode assemblies. Unlike a fuel cell, however, the JTEC is a closed system--it doesn't need new supplies of hydrogen. One assembly is coupled to a heat source (such as concentrated sunlight), and the other to a heat sink (ambient air).

Once the cycle is started by an electrical jolt, the unit starts producing a current. Heat in, electricity out. Johnson's concept may take years to commercialize--but it has the potential to convert heat to electricity at double the efficiency of today's best technology. The JTEC "could have widespread impact," says Karl Littau, a materials chemist at the Palo Alto Research Center. "You look at it and say, `Wow, why didn't someone think of this before?'"